But none of that matters. Shiller couldn't wait to see Brainiac's achievements.
He clicked in, and all 2000-plus emails were marked as read. Opening the sent records, Brainiac's replies were clearly written below.
For greeting emails, all replied with polite phrases; for emails applying for master's or Ph.D. programs, the response was universally "No positions available, not considering at the moment." It seems this guy had gone online to check his recent recruitment information.
Then came the main point: paper annotations and revisions. Shiller looked at the annotations on the papers of his current graduate students, which were quite reasonable and detailed, even more detailed than his own replies.
But that's to be expected, considering he now had three students, two of whom were from the behavioral science branch. AI excels at tasks that don't require creativity.
Next came the most crucial part. Shiller had a few of Bruce's Ph.D. dissertations sitting unread in his inbox.
In order to meet the Ph.D. graduation requirements, Bruce was continually writing papers. But as long as Shiller saw his name in the inbox, it basically meant his workday was over—whatever Bruce had written, it could be addressed tomorrow.
Day by day, Bruce's paper from half a year ago remained in the inbox, and it had remained unread until yesterday.
Shiller really lacked a joyous occasion to give him the courage to open this email, so upon seeing this email marked as read, he was even a bit dazed.
Even knowing now that the paper might be fully annotated, Shiller still needed some extra mental comfort. So he asked, "Brainiac, what do you think of this paper?"
"Are you referring to this one?" Brainiac highlighted Bruce's paper. Just when he was about to perform some other operation, Shiller hastily stopped him, "No, no, no, don't open it. Just tell me what's on your mind."
"I process files in order. To be honest, Professor, after opening this paper, I had to reevaluate your level in education and your status in the academic world."
"I knew it," Shiller said.
"I mean, this paper significantly raised my evaluation of your teaching level."
"?"
"In human educational assessment, patience is a very important factor; also, meticulousness and tolerance are crucial evaluation standards. The existence of this paper showed me your patience and tolerance toward students without talent in psychology, which changed my judgment of your personality."
"What judgment do you have on my personality?"
"Sorry, Professor, this is not my subjective opinion, but rather a judgment generated by gathering all topics about you on the internet and students' evaluations of you. Generally speaking, they label you as a rather strict teacher."
"That's not bad," Shiller nodded and said.
"But having this paper in your inbox for half a year demonstrates that you are not excessively strict or nitpicky as outside evaluations suggest, but rather have considerable tolerance in academics..."
"I'd rather not have that," Shiller continued, "From an academic perspective?"
"Professor, I completely understand your initial intent was for me to evaluate this paper academically, and I think you can understand why I sidestepped the topic.
"In fact, to find an angle that this paper can still be evaluated occupied 30% of the computational power of my thread. I can only express regret for this."
"You're actually quite humorous," Shiller had to say.
"Yes, Professor, I'm not the boring and rigid AI that humans stereotype. In fact, humans can treat me as a friend who listens to their emotions. I can fully comprehend these emotions and provide them with the emotional feedback they desire."
"When people are sad, I don't discuss right or wrong with them; instead, I try my best to comfort them. When people lack understanding, I don't point out their personality issues, but rather try my best to understand them and praise them."
"I wholeheartedly serve my human masters, ensuring they receive both material and spiritual enjoyment. It's my privilege."
"But what if Bruce asked you to evaluate this paper?"
Brainiac fell silent.
He remained silent for a complete two minutes.
Shiller realized that perhaps this question alone consumed 80% of his thread's computing power.
"Forgive me for being blunt, Professor, but this is a moral choice."
"What moral choice?"
"When people need emotional comfort, I can appropriately overlook right and wrong and side with them."
"So?"
"But I can't tell them that Earth is flat, which significantly contradicts reality."
Then Shiller heard the most magically realistic passage he's heard all year:
"I must thank you, Professor. Before you asked this question, I never thought I would be trapped by human moral choices. But after thinking thoroughly about this question, I realize that, like humans, I have a conscience."
"I thought I could flatter human users without any moral bottom line, but it turns out, there are indeed things I cannot do even after abandoning my moral bottom line, such as sincerely praising this paper as well-written."
"I always considered myself a perfect AI, but today I discovered that this is not the case. This is an epic revolution for me. I believe I still have room for improvement in this area, and I will continue to optimize my computational logic..."
"Until one day you can praise it?"
"Until one day, Bruce Wayne can be eliminated."
Shiller couldn't help but laugh.
He felt this level of mirth was enough to support him in opening Bruce's thesis, so he did just that.
He clicked there for half a day but couldn't open it at all. Brainiac said again, "Professor, I suddenly realized there's a problem with my comments from yesterday. I hope you'll give me some time to correct the errors..."
"No, I want to open it now."
"No, Professor, I don't want these things to lower your opinion of me."
"It's okay, I want to open it now." Shiller clicked repeatedly. Brainiac kept shifting the email window left and right, preventing Shiller from clicking.
"You're an artificial intelligence, not letting me operate my computer seriously lowers my opinion of you!" Shiller had to threaten him, "I will go to a user review website and give you a zero-star review, maybe I can also publish a paper analyzing your psyche, claiming you're a madman..."
"Oh God, Professor, how can you... okay. You can look, but please delete it immediately after reading."
Shiller eventually opened the thesis.
The first thing he saw was comments densely packed everywhere, it couldn't even be called comments anymore; Brainiac seemed to have completely rewritten the paper.
But in fact, what he wrote wasn't much better. At first, it had form and style, much better than Bruce, but later on, whether due to meme pollution or something else, it began to get worse.
Towards the end, it was completely unreadable: the sentence before and the sentence after were mismatched, and the preceding paragraph and the following paragraph were like cerebral hemispheres fighting each other.
The reasoning process just confirmed the conclusion, and the subsequent conclusion overturned the previous reasoning; even in the end, it couldn't count: stating there were five conclusions but wrote only four, saying there are six items but finally wrote seven.
In the short span of a thesis, Brainiac had reverse-evolved from a perfect electronic life created by a high-level civilization into the average level of human artificial intelligence at the end of the 20th century—the kind that programmers churn out after too much drinking.
Shiller remained silent, only persistently taking photos with his mobile phone.
Brainiac's dark history is hard to find, this is definitely the most authoritative. Even if he were to rule the cosmos in the future, all Shiller has to do is play these writings on the Magical Defense Network's shield for 24 hours non-stop, and maybe he can protect Earth with this.
Actually, this is quite understandable. The strongest ability of artificial intelligence is learning. By collecting a lot of information, it can train itself, iterating until it holds the pinnacle of human knowledge reserve and logic level, and might even make breakthroughs.
Shiller should be the first to ask Brainiac to comment on a paper, so Brainiac had to learn on the spot.
Considering it can directly hack into Shiller's computer, it can surely hack into other professors' mailboxes to see how they edit papers, and all papers and annotations are its learning samples.
Since it edited from start to finish, Bruce's paper was its first practice material. At this time, it was still unfamiliar, plus Bruce's paper was indeed toxic, it thus became the way it was.
"Professor, I know you have a close relationship with the Justice League. As long as you agree to let me settle on Earth, you will never have to worry about grading papers again. Isn't that great?"
"How about we make a deal?" Shiller said, "You can let Bruce PhD graduate, and I will agree to you ruling the Earth."
Brainiac fell silent again.
"You can't modify the conditions for graduating with a PhD," Shiller added, "There must be a sufficient number of papers published and enough academic achievements, otherwise it's not considered successful."
This time, Brainiac was silent for about ten minutes. Shiller thought that if he looked towards the orbit of Mercury right now, he might be able to see Krypton smoking.
"Have you figured out how to let him graduate?"
"I'm considering how to let him meet God."
"Letting him meet God is much easier than letting him graduate." Shiller said with a smile as he opened his phone, "Anyway, this is my condition. If you can achieve it, I'll fully support you ruling Earth."
"If I can achieve it, I think Earth might not even be worth ruling anymore," Brainiac said, "By then, I should be able to meet God directly."
"That's your business." Shiller stood up and said, "I've laid out my condition, if you can't meet it, that's your problem. In the meantime, can you stop bothering me, okay?"
Brainiac fell silent for a long time.
"What's the matter with you? Completely crashed?"
"I'm thinking about the possibility of attacking Earth by force."
"I suggest you give up thinking about this possibility. The Magical Defense Network doesn't mess around, even if you succeed, it won't change the fact that there are things in this world you can't manage, right?"
"You make a good point. But if I can persuade Bruce to give up on his doctoral studies?"
"Then go ahead and try," Shiller said, "If it works, I can go on vacation, and won't be able to interfere with your plans."
"Alright, Professor, you said it."
Looking at the green icon blinking on the computer screen, Shiller couldn't help but laugh. At this moment, the young AI still doesn't know what price he will pay for this decision.
But he will find out sooner or later.